Ok, so it's time to start looking at what we need to get 9-man off the ground. We can do it here, or link up a raid next week to discuss this further.

In particular, I'd like to verify what we're bringing to the raid (class and role), what we'll need and what gear we need from normal instances and heroics to be raid-ready. Additionally, we should look at what days are going to work, what times would be best (through the lens of server time, of course), and what raids we should look at starting with. We've got 3 to choose from and up to 2 days to play.

Of course, any 5-man and heroics that need to be done I'm willing to lend my blades to when I get home from work. Additionally I'm going to be unable to do anything wow-wise this coming Sunday until Weds. evening -- yearly business conference we put on that was actually one of the the causes of our late start to raiding last expansion.

So, failing posts here over the next 2 days, I'll be online next Weds. night to discuss things.

-Orin

I'll be bringing Korhath

He is Heroic ready but needs to run alot of them to be raid ready and the 30+ minute queue time isn't helping

I'd need to stay with our Wed, Sun raid schedule since I have committed Kordun elsewhere

Fiad and I likely can't do Wednesday, though we may be able to move our commitment to Tuesday. I think he's plannin' on scheduling around Muffins though.

Ilyeina is theoretically heroic-ready though I'd like to improve a few pieces of gear first.

Tuesday Sunday would work...

Did you guys have times/days in mind we could work on 5 mans until we are raid ready?

8:30ish on non-Wednesdays? Maybe during the day too, though we won't have Orin then.

I'm currently off by 5:30 Wednesdays, and any other day of the week I'll be home/online ~8:30. However, in March that'll change to me opening (being at work at 4am, off at 1pm).

So, going forward, any day is really open, and if we don't mind starting things at 8:30 for about a month and a half, I'll be there for everything.

Stoneweaver's current equipped ilvl is 339, and the only thing under 333 is gloves (to be replaced with JP gloves as soon as I have the points, not too long) and ranged (and there's very few tanking ranged weapons out there, they are BoE - but I've yet to see any on the AH)

There's not really anything left for me to get out of normal dungeons now, aside from a weapon with a tad more stamina - but there's only one. And rep, to fill up Ramkahen and Wildhammer and get bracers/boots, respectively. And rep can be gotten in heroics.

I'd been planning on starting a regular 9-man dungeon run on wednesdays, but if that's not going to work for people, I can really do it any night - again, after 8:30 for the time being. I don't mind running regular dungeons to get people geared up for heroics. And, to be honest, I hate queuing as a tank if I'm not sure of the quality of the group I'll get. I'm with Kor on the 30 minute queues being annoying, but I've seen enough shenanigans in normals, and the couple of random heroics, to tell me that a sharp poke in the eye with a stick might be preferable. And more pleasurable.


(Fun fact - to check your equipped ilvl if you have dual-spec and two sets of gear, log out in the set you want to check, and head to the armory. It'll tell you average ilvl, and equipped ilvl. Which they really should have in-game, as well. Not that people aren't already exploiting it by equipping the crafted pvp gear to queue for heroics.)

This is my last week of being randomly kidnapped last minute, so regular dungeon runs would be good for me too. As I told Eli and Fiad, I'd gotten bit by the hunter when Cata dropped so she's my only 85 atm, but healing queues aren't quite as long as DPS so Jory shouldn't be TOO hard to power level...which is my priority...starting tomorrow. *hangs head* I have plans for tonight, sorry!

OK, I've got something tying me up from 7:30p to 10:30 or so tonight. After that until I pass out I'm going to be available to run normals to get folks geared. I'll continue this on Friday and Sunday for certain starting at 7:30pm. Next week should be quieter now that I'm not doing 11-13 hour days staffing a conference, but I do expect to be doing a decent amount of overtime trying to get a pretty advanced (read: neat) Cisco wireless network up and running before the CTO murders me. So once I have gotten back Mon-Tue-Thur-Fri next week I will be running instances (non-Heroic until we have enough to run heroics) from the time I finish dinner to the time I pass out.

This is an open invite to those who want to join 9-man's raiding as well -- because this is the perfect time to get geared along with everyone else if you're not up to snuff yet.

So far I want to work around Muffins/Pie to avoid schedule conflicts for a lot of reasons including Korhath. Sunday is a definite. The next day, no clue just yet, but I'll have an idea later tonight. Still want to do the normal schedule of 8-11 server the nights we schedule, but with the move my transit to and from work is a bit odd until I can get 1-2 things resolved.

With the raids being shorter we will hit all three raids eventually, but I know I do not want to raid 3 nights a week so as we're doing instances if folks have ideas/suggestions I'm open to hearing what we should do first.

Orin

So this is what I've got so far.
Verified:
Stoneweaver - Tank
Orinpaleeye - Rogue
Jorlena - Druid (H)
Elsucio - DPS/Tank (Palbundy?)
Korhath - DPS
Ilyeina - Shammy (H)

Shown interest in joining:
Dukat - Rogue
Silversirea - Mage

Assuming both join up, we're looking at a total of 8. Absolutely need a 3rd healer and should keep an eye open for a solid tank to give Elsucio options as to what he would like to play.

Based on Muffin's Schedule and other scheduling issues, Tuesday looks to be our best day to have our second day to raid, as Weds. is chewed up on my end (along with Zsari) for other matters.

First sally date is Sunday, Jan 30. We'll be seeing what our roster looks like at 8p. In the meantime, I'm going to start publicly recruiting this week and my current plan is to run a heroic every night from tonight on -- although on some days I will be quite late in getting out the gate.

Questions?

-Orin

Korhath is hit capped but is several upgrades and about 2kdps short of being raid ready. Pie has started raiding but I will be on every night they aren't raiding @8:30 server time for heroics.

I kinda doubt we will be ready to run by the 30th

My work schedule changed earlier than I expected it to by about a month, so aside from Tues/Sun, i'm going to be on in the early afternoons and early mornings. (~1pm to 4pm and ~12am to 3:30am) I'm still adjusting a bit, in which case the early morning times (when I'm getting up) are likely to vary the most.

Quite a few of us still need some gearing, though. I understand that running random heroics anything without a preformed group can be a real mind-breaker at times. Run at least your normal dungeon random for the JP, then queue for some that have your upgrades in them. At the very least you'll be getting rep - there should be 1-2 epics available at exalted out of them. And don't forget about the Tol Barad dailies. If you don't spend any of the commendations, by the time you hit exalted, you'll be able to buy an epic trinket. Granted, depending on class/spec they may not be optimal - but they are guaranteed, instead of having to rely on the RNG for a drop.

Sunday evenings have always been great for me and Tuesdays will work if that is day #2. At present, short of top end enchants due to no maelstrom crystals, I am essentially equally geared on Els as either prot or fury. By the 30th I should have the final rep items - save for Tol Barad - I am shooting for. My prot pally is about the same level.

More than happy to fill the tank or dps role - whatever the raid needs - with either toon so I will let you deep thinking, analytical, theorycrafting uber players dictate which toon you'd like - even if it is warrior one week and pally the next. Once again, I'm just happy to be along for the ride and spending time with good people.

Finally, Silversirea said she very much wants to join in with us so count on one more mage dps to the party.

If we're not ready, we're not ready by sunday -- that's fine. We'll run heroics so we can fill out the gear needs and get our coordination practice in. A decent number of the fights (the first one in throne, for example) is coordination-heavy, so the more we do the better. We can call this a dry run if it turns poor -- but I think we need to call a fire drill to see how ready we all are regardless. Meetup on the 1st will depend on how we do on Sunday, but next sunday (the 6th) is guaranteed.

True. Getting everyone together, if only to see what spots need to be filled, is good. Even if we're not quite all there yet, as long as we have 10 people, we can always split into 2 5-mans to do heroics.